Q&A: Finding Balance & Task Concentration

Hi there. Throughout the year, I've received a lot of questions from my friends on Facebook. So we've decided to sit down and answer these questions and let me give you my thoughts and insights and experiences, and they may be helpful to you. And questions from one person may be a question that you might have asked yourself. So let's get started.

Kimia from Facebook asked, how do I balance studying and hobbies?

Well, with regard to balance in life, the fact is that to be successful, you have to have what is called deliberate imbalance. And that means at certain stages of your life, you just throw your whole heart into doing only one thing to the exclusion of everything else. People who are always striving for balance unfortunately never accomplish anything. They never accomplish anything in either side because they're only doing a little bit. Her half work in hobbies and half work in studies. So what you do is you concentrate 100% on your studies and only your studies until you're totally caught up with all of your assignments and then you can relax with your hobbies. I don't know any successful people who are preoccupied with hobbies. All successful people that I know are preoccupied with getting the most important results necessary for their success in life at this time. And if they have extra time after they have accomplished all the most important things, well, then they're relaxed with hobbies. That might be helpful to you as well.

Kurt from Facebook asked, I think I've been successful in my business endeavors and they have made me money and happy. My problem is concentration and staying on task. Any suggestions?

Well, my best selling book in the world today is called eat that frog 21 great ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Things Done faster. I just came back from Russia and Hungary and China and Tehran, Iran, and in all of those countries, this book is the national bestseller. It's gone into 10 and 20 printings. It's sold hundreds of thousands and millions of copies. Because everybody has the same concern that you have is how do you stay on task and concentrate? And the answer is, you just have to keep bringing yourself back on on task. Now, there's two mantras which I learned many years ago from the time management experts. One is to say over and over again, do it now, do it now, do it now. Whenever you're thinking and delaying and you're checking your email and shuffling your papers, start saying to yourself, do it now, do it now, do it now. And what it does is it actually impels you into getting to work. Now. The second mantra, which is really great is when you feel yourself being distracted and thinking of getting up and walking around, say to yourself, back to work, back to work, back to work. And I've taught these all over the world, and they work in every language is do it now and back to work. Do it now and back to work. Now, here's another really key, important point is if you're going to do a task, lay it out and do a checklist for that task. Before you begin, write down each step in the task and write them down in a logical chronological series, and then begin working one task at a time, ticking it off. This ticking off of each individual task is incredibly motivating. It helps you to concentrate, it helps you to focus and helps you to stay on track. So if you try those techniques, I think they'll be very helpful to you. Now, I've given you a couple of ideas, so the most important thing that you can do is to take action. So what one action are you going to take as a result of these key ideas that I've just given you? Whatever it is, jot it down and let me know. Remember, one action that you take that you would not have taken in the absence of this discussion can change your life forever.